


Captured

by EagleOfTheNinth



Series: They Fight Crime [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Other, so I won't even try to list all the FFs involved, this is going to be crossover of all crossovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-29
Updated: 2012-02-29
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:06:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EagleOfTheNinth/pseuds/EagleOfTheNinth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Occurs before They Fight Crime. Vanille goes to sleep, and wakes up somewhere else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captured

Vanille wakes up because it’s cold. She doesn’t see anything unusual in this. Eyes still shut, she goes to poke her girlfriend in the side where she’s especially ticklish, complaining, “Fang, you big blanket thief!”

Except there’s no Fang. Her questing hand finds only air. Vanille’s eyes jolt open, and panic rises hot in her-she tries to suppress it, because she’s l’Cie and the last thing she wants is for that glaring red eye burnt on her skin to open up any further-

But there’s no Fang. No Lightning. No Hope or Sazh or Snow, no blankets, no campfire, no Sulyya Springs, no mountains, no-oh, gods.

No Cocoon. The sky is dark blue and empty-not a cloud, not a star, and definitely no luminous floating shell-world.

So either Cocoon’s been destroyed-which it can’t be, because if it had been she’d be crystal again and dreaming. Or else there’s _no Gran Pulse_.

“Don’t panic, Vanille,” she tells herself, trying to take comfort in the sound of her own voice(but it’s shaky and lost and painfully young, and it only makes things worse). “Don’t panic. This can’t be real. It’s got to be a dream.” She’s never had a nightmare like this before-nightmares of Ragnarok, yes, nightmares of turning Cie’th, of watching Fang and their friends turn Cie’th, of the awful moment at the spring revel when Anima reached out and grabbed her-but this is completely new. Which makes it worse, because at least she was used to-but if it’s a dream, it can’t go on forever, and she pinches herself, hard. Everyone knows you can’t feel pain in dreams.

It hurts. She tries again. She doesn’t wake up.

There is no use trying to hold the panic back, now. She bites her tongue, hard, because if she opens her mouth she’s going to scream, just scream and scream until the screaming isn’t coming from a human throat anymore, and looks around. Tries to take stock of her situation.

She’s alone, completely. No people; no evidence of people, not a single manmade artefact that might testify to a human presence. Desert sprawls all around her, as far as the eye can see-which seems...not as far as usual, somehow, as though the planet has shrunk in the wash. (But then, if this isn’t her planet-) Bone-dry earth; a few sparse shrubs. Freezing cold. She remembers vaguely, from a former life, before gods-know-how-many years of crystal slumber, hearing somewhere about deserts. In the daytime, they’ll bake you alive; but at night, you’re likely to die of hypothermia. She wraps her arms around herself tightly, and wishes she still had her blanket.

She’s still wearing her own clothes. They don’t do much to cover her. On warm Gran Pulse that was never much of an issue, nor on perpetually temperate and placid Cocoon. This place, though-she may not have time to turn Cie’th(don’t panic, don’t panic, _don’t_ )-natural forces may finish her off first. She still has her satchel-and in it, she discovers, three and a half Potions, two Phoenix Downs, a couple of machine components she’d scavenged from enemies in the Mah’habara Underground, her canteen(a little under half full)and two of Lightning’s disgusting military ration bars. She seems uninjured. The brand on her thigh is the same as it was when she lay down last night. She can still feel the thrum of magic inside her; and, deeper, the endless love and patience of her Eidolon.

She closes her eyes, and concentrates on that, on the calm of rocks and earth warm with sunlight, and the calm flows into her, holding the panic at bay. _Love you,_ she thinks to him; _love you so much-thank you, thank you_. It’s okay. All is not lost yet. If she just picks a direction and goes far enough, sooner or later she’s bound to find shelter or people, food or water. Hecaton can carry her there-he may not be quite so swift as Brynhildr or the Shiva, but he’s still faster than almost _anything_ other than an Eidolon. She’s well-rested; he’ll be able to keep going for a good amount of time. She’ll find some clue to where she is, and that may give her an idea of how to get back. It’s okay. It’s okay.

She smiles to herself, and touches her hand to her thigh to draw out the Eidolith.

...Something’s wrong. She can-she can feel Hecaton’s confusion as well as her own, and that scares her, because Eidolons are _never_ confused or uncertain, never! But...he’s having to _fight_ to come out. It’s like he’s wading through treacle. The summoning glyph traces itself around her; but instead of blazing with light, it only glimmers faintly. She takes a deep breath, shaking, and stops-lets the Eidolith dissolve back into her marked flesh, the summoning glyph fade away. In her heart, Hecaton shifts fitfully, returning to his resting-place. His emotions flicker across the surface of her mind; confusion, yes, and worry, and fear.

“Eidolons shouldn’t be afraid,” she whispers. She doesn’t realise she’s said it aloud.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t-

-oh, thank goodness, thank goodness! That plume of dust on the horizon-she shades her eyes and squints at it. Yes, that’s a-well, she’s not sure what _exactly_ , but it’s _some_ sort of vehicle, and that means _people_! She jumps up and down, waving her arms- _over here, over here_!

The vehicle grows closer. It’s squat and bulky, armoured in steel. It looks...foreign. Not like a Pulsework machine. But not like a Cocoonite creation, either. Closer still-gunmetal grey with faded white and orange markings. The windshield is darkened glass; she can’t see through it.

Closer still, and drawing to a halt. She smiles and waves as people get out, surreptitiously tugging her skirt down over her brand with her other hand. They don’t look like Cocoonites, but you can’t be too careful...but uh-oh. That was no use, it looks like. They’re approaching her cautiously, weapons drawn. Ulp. Still, even hostile people are better than being lost in a desert alone, right? She raises her hands, _look-I’m-unarmed_ , a ridiculous gesture for a l’Cie and especially an expert magic-wielder like herself. But she _doesn’t_ mean these people harm, whoever they are-

The one in the middle looks like he’s the leader. Or she, maybe-there’s no way to tell, under armour and a visored helmet like a dark mirror. “Oerba Dia Vanille,” yes, he is a he, and his accent suggests he’s from Cocoon. Vanille wonders for a split second whether to confirm or deny her identity, and has just settled on ‘deny’ when he adds, “She fits the description. Bring her in.” _Uh_ -oh.

The next few seconds are confused. Vanille tries to run-she’s certain of that, she turns and tries to run. But-everything’s going blurry, and she looks down and there’s a dart sticking out of her leg. Oh, _no_...

Everything goes fuzzy.

_Sulyya Springs. She dreams of Bismarck, breaking the surface, pale and terrible and awesome. She dreams the gurgle and trickle of waters, the smell of them, of the little plants that grow lush at the water’s edge._

_And then, somehow, in the smooth illogical way of dreams, she_ is _Bismarck, and all Sulyya Springs is her domain. She swims through it with slow grace and complacent power. She is king here; king of the world’s water. An undisputed monarch. She feels the complete certainty of the fal’Cie, more certain and single than humans or l’Cie can ever be._

_And then-a voice, a human voice. She breaches the surface, again, not angry so much as peeved, for anger is not worth wasting on this tiny shred of flesh and bone that dares to defile the springs of Bismarck._

_The human smiles. It is hard to see that-she sees as Bismarck sees, two small eyes on either side of a huge blunt whale-head. But she’s quite certain. The human-a girl, it’s a girl, close in age maybe to the human Vanille-smiles, and cups her hands, scoops water from the lake and drinks it._

_Vanille-Bismarck roars, outraged, and gathers her power about her._

_The human girl smiles wider. Spreads her hands. And suddenly-it’s like someone pulled the plug of the biggest bathtub in the world-the water of Sulyya begins to drain away. Vanille-Bismarck tries to unleash an attack-but the energy dissipates, harmless, and the water level keeps on dropping. Faster and faster._

_She thrashes in panic, in incomprehension-how can this happen to me? I who am Master?-but the water keeps draining, and the human keeps smiling. Vanille feels fear as only something as old and proud and complacent as a fal’Cie can, fear mated with outrage, with contempt for the universe that this tiny, insignificant mortal should be able to best her. And still the water vanishes-till there is no water, just bare stone, and Vanille-Bismarck is left flopping and gasping on it like a common hooked fish as dry air burns her skin-_

-she’s being shaken, and jabbed by something sharp.

“Get up,” someone snarls at her-the man from earlier? Another jab. Vanille tries her best to obey, not wanting the jabs to turn to outright stabs, but her arms and legs are still all floppy and useless from the tranquilliser. Something’s cold and heavy at her wrists, something like it at her ankles. When she moves she hears the clink of chains.

The soldiers(they must be soldiers)half-carry, half-drag her out of their vehicle, through a steel door, down a passage. Her head’s beginning to clear, now. She is shackled and manacled, and there’s the heavy, oppressive feeling of Fog sitting on her brain. She doesn’t seem otherwise injured. The soldiers who abducted her, or else three other people dressed just like them, have been joined by...six more people, armed and armoured but not helmeted, and-good grief. They’ve got _tails_. Her steps falter in shock, and she gets jabbed with a bayonet again, an unsubtle warning to pick up the pace. But... _tails_. What sort of people have tails? Are they people at all?

Through another door, down another corridor, round a corner. Bare steel everywhere, dented and rusted. This place looks...not old, exactly, but like a new thing cobbled together out of old parts. A quick glance down at her manacles. They’re old, too. Not rusty, but old. They’d be enough to hold a human, but maybe a l’Cie can break them, even a magic-specialist l’Cie. She can’t do that now, though-she’d be shot immediately. She has to wait for the right moment.

More corridors. More doors. Manacles, soldiers-she thinks of the train, of the Purge. Is her life going in circles? Because if it is, she’d prefer it if it could circle her back to Gran Pulse, and her friends. Or...or anyone, really. Even PSICOM trying to hunt her. At least she understood what was happening then.

Maybe these people are PSICOM. No, that doesn’t make sense. That _sky_. If this was Cocoon there’d be townlights, but there hadn’t been a single ersatz star. And this isn’t-isn’t polished enough for Cocoon. Lindzei’s civilisation is powerful and wealthy and obsessively maintained. Not _rusty_.

Another door. This one leads to a room; a control room? A laboratory? Banks of screens and dials; people attending to them. And, confusingly, taking up nearly the whole of one wall, a statue. A woman, eyes closed, face blank, arms spread wide. Her hair is depicted as a cloud of elaborate scrolling about her, silver and gold. Her body has the deep-black lustre of refined adamantium. Finely made, and beautiful.

And _wrong_. Vanille feels every hair on her body stand on end. The wrongness in this room is so heavy she can hardly breathe, thick as the stench of a slaughterhouse. _Wrong, old, decaying. Open sewers, rotting corpses, stagnant water, wrongwrongwrong._ She clenches her mouth shut, and tries not to retch.

The people are talking, in undertones. Vanille can catch a few words, here and there. “...it work?” she hears. “...not tried it with...world...”

“...experiment,” another says. “If...extracted...more where that came from.”

“...likely to...consequences?”

“...in luck there.” The man laughs; Vanille strains her ears, and hears him say, without a doubt, “They’re fugitives. Nobody cares about l’Cie.”

Her blood freezes.

She forgets about waiting for the opportune moment, then; summons up every bit of l’Cie strength she can muster, and _snap_ , her arms are free. Her captors seize her; she thrashes wildly, desperate, punches and _kicks_ as the restraints around her ankles break too. They’re strong, these people, though, strong as she is, stronger maybe-her hand grabs at the flesh of her thigh, nails digging into the brand, yanking out the Eidolith, and though the glyph’s light is pale and watery it _works_ , and there are arms bursting up out of the floor, some dealing mighty blows to her enemies, some reaching out to pull her close and hold her tight. Sunlit-stone strength, geological patience and the fury of the earthquake, he came, he is with her, Hecatoncheir-

Something jolts.

Or flips.

Or opens.

On the statue’s chest, above the smooth, cold metal bosom, a mark like a winged eye burns with sullen fire-

_Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong_. Wrongness brings her to her knees, and this time she does vomit, the disgusting taste in her mouth adding to the disgusting taste in her mind. Stinking swamps. Carrion crawling with maggots. She reaches out for Hecaton, clutching at him with hands and mind, trying to fill herself with his clean metal and earth instead of this alien foulness-

-she reaches for him-

-and pain, pain like nothing she’s ever felt, nothing they’ve ever felt, agony lancing through them, the rot is sticking to his metal and her skin. Pain, pain, pain, she clings tight to him and prays for it to go away-

-but he’s not there-

-he’s not there. Hecaton’s not there. He’s right in front of her, she can see herself clinging to him, but he’s not there. She can’t feel him. He’s there and she can see him, but he _isn’t_ , there’s no sunlit-earth calm, no hundred-handed protector, not even the faint whispers she remembers from before he ever showed himself in response to her grief and guilt, before she faced him among the flowers of Mah’habara, before he yielded to her and gave her his back for a throne, his power for a crown and his love for a cloak. Not even those whispers. _Nothing_. A hole, a hole in her heart, as she looks at her Eidolon and feels nothing because _he is not hers anymore-_

-and then, he’s gone entirely, she can’t even see him anymore. Just...this room, the wounds in metal and flesh he left, an alarm blaring and that damned statue smiling inscrutably at her as a winged-eye mark fades away.

Nothing. Endless and hungry, bare as bone. Nothing, and the sound of screaming.

She realises that it is her voice screaming a second before she passes out.


End file.
